Tag: Irish Authors

Trespasses – Louise Kennedy (2022)

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As I was reading this it was announced that Louise Kennedy has made the shortlist for the 2023 Women’s Fiction Prize alongside Jacqueline Crooks whose “Fire Rush” I have already read and rated five stars.  On the evidence of these two books this particular judging panel seem to know how to spot a gem.  I think this novel is outstanding and a serious contender for my Book Of The Year (yes, I know it’s only May!)

It caught my attention when it won Novel Of The Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards beating Donal Ryan, whose book I’d loved.  It was also a title which popped up when I was “Looking Around” at what other bloggers had loved at the end of 2022 and Cathy at 746 Books and Karen at Booker Talk and my friend Louise’s recommendations were enough to push this up my To Be Read List.

Set in Northern Ireland in 1974 it is ostensibly a tale of a problematic relationship between a Catholic Primary School teacher who works part-time in her family’s pub and a customer, an older Protestant barrister.  But it is so much more as with a lot of attention to domestic detail the author humanises a world which seemed so alien to those of us who were around then watching the horrors of daily news bulletins in the UK at the height of The Troubles.  As a child then it seemed impossible to me that life could go on as normal there through the barricades, searches, explosions and retaliations but Louise Kennedy brings this time to life.  I recall enough to know that this is subject matter that I would not actively seek out but the author has convinced me otherwise in skilfully recreating this time and location. 

Characterisation is great.  Main protagonist Cushla’s mother copes with the effects The Troubles have had on her family through alcohol and some wonderful one-liners.  Her class favourite, seven year old Danny is such a strong illustration of the resilience of children, her colleague Gerry is a valuable support and there’s a very scary parish priest.

Perhaps the hardest thing to come to terms with was what Cushla sees in barrister Michael Agnew and whether it is worth the trouble it will cause but the author does  not romanticise this attachment.  We see it in its warts-and-all reality but accept that Cushla is experiencing something different.

I felt my involvement which started off very strong deepened more and more as I progressed through this excellent book.  There really has been some exceptional writing coming out of Ireland the last decade or so and this, dealing with very difficult issues and a very difficult time in the country’s history is amongst the very best.

Trespasses was published in 2022 by Bloomsbury.

Home Stretch- Graham Norton (2020)

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I’ve now read three Graham Norton novels (two in rapid succession) and there’s nothing in this work to contradict my view of him as one of the best popular fiction authors around.

“Home Stretch” has a wider scope than his other novels taking in Irish, London and New York locations and spanning over thirty years.  It’s also the first time we have had sexuality as a main theme within the novel and in the Acknowledgements the author salutes those “who stayed in Ireland to fight for the modern, tolerant country it has become.” He states; “I took the easy way out and left to find places where I could be myself.” I both enjoyed this widening of the geographical scope of this and missed the intensity of the small town Irish life depicted in his first two novels.  Having said that I was  really involved with the sections set in London and New York.

In 1987 the Irish town of Mullinmore is rocked by a tragedy which completely and forever changes the lives of the survivors.  The way in which it becomes untenable for a small community to continue with feelings of blame and guilt is so well conveyed here and Connor needs to leave.  This is the tale of how things pan out following the cataclysmic incident for those who have attempted to escape and those who have chosen to stay behind.

There’s humour, there’s darkness and there’s the pull of family which both attracts and repels over more than one generation and over three novels Graham Norton has shown how well he handles these aspects.  Plot-wise I did see the twists coming but it is the repercussions of such twists he handles well.  Timewise there are the odd jumps back and forwards but he does always let us know what year we are in.  This structure always necessitates a bit of filling in the gaps which I can feel a bit jarring but he mostly gets away with it here.

This brought him his second “Popular Fiction Book Of The Year” at the Irish Book Awards and was critically well-received.  I think by this stage in his career people are getting over their “this is by Graham Norton!” surprise and are accepting him as a fine writer demonstrating a range of skills, now over three books each with a different feel.

I really enjoyed this but I must admit to a slightly stronger affinity towards his second novel “A Keeper.”  His fourth “Forever Home” appeared in 2022.

Home Stretch was first published by Hodder & Stoughton in the UK in 2020.

A Keeper – Graham Norton (2018)

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Sometimes a book completely resonates.  It’s often just a matter of timing- it fulfils all you are looking for in a reading experience at that present time, even if you’re not always aware that is what you’re looking for.  When this happens, these tend to be the books that stay with you.

I wasn’t aware that I was yearning for an Irish-set family saga which dealt in secrets, infused with a nostalgic glow but hiding a tale of darkness but I obviously was as this book had me right from the start and didn’t let go.

I read Graham Norton’s debut “Holding” pre-publication in 2016 and I certainly did not know what to expect and was most taken aback by his understated slice of small-town Irish life.  From the personality on the screen and from his autobiographies I’d made an assumption of what kind of novel he might write. At the time I stated; “It certainly wasn’t the book I was expecting him to write.  I was expecting sharp, brittle humour and a much more glitzy affair.”  I’ve recommended this book to many readers since then, especially when I wanted to shake up people’s perceptions but I hadn’t got round to reading anything else by him.

Now he is a very much established author of four novels with critical acclaim matching his commercial success, especially in his homeland where he has won the Popular Fiction Book Of The Year twice at the Irish Book Awards (but not with this book, although it was nominated as it was for the UK Book Awards ).  I think on the strength of this Graham Norton deserves his place amongst the finest Irish novelists of our time.

We have two interspersing narratives, “Now” and “Then”.  This structure can be hit and miss as readers tend to favour one or the other and rush through to get to the strand they are enjoying the most, I don’t really have that much of a problem with this structure although I have heard readers complaining about it.  For me, it certainly works well here as the “Then” informs the “Now” throughout.  I think the danger comes when you have two seemingly disparate strands and you spend much of the book waiting for them to mesh together.

There’s a prologue “Before” which is a bit enigmatic but just needs to be kept in mind.  I found myself turning back at a couple of points in the novel and re-reading this. 

New York resident Elizabeth Keane has returned to Ireland to sort out her dead mother’s house.  She discovers letters which suggest she does not know her mother’s life at all.  “Then” features Patricia’s story behind those letters.  Seeing the plot laid out like that it doesn’t sound all that original but I think the author handles the plotline skilfully and weaves a tale which really drew this reader in.

His characterisation is strong.  I really enjoyed both “Now” and “Then” and his feel  for the Irishness within the world he creates felt spot-on for his debut and even more so here.  Some of the minor characters are beautifully realised and this reminded me of Donal Ryan, one of the finest contemporary Irish writers.  Norton certainly knows what he is doing within his popular fiction framework to keep the reader involved.  Secrets are revealed unexpectedly, there’s humour, darkness, a strong feel of the environment with the 1970s small-town coastal setting coming across so well in the “Then” sections.  Also, I slowed down towards the end because I was reluctant to finish the experience- another signifier that this book deserves my highest rating.  Once again Graham Norton has surprised me.

A Keeper was first published in the UK by Hodder and Stoughton in 2018.

Small Things Like These – Claire Keegan (2021)

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“Why were the things that were closest so often the hardest to see?”

It’s been a long time since anybody bought me a novel as a present wanting me to read it because it has made such an impression on them.  So thanks to my dear friend Louise as this book was one of her favourite reads of last year as well as enjoying wider critical acclaim; a place on the 2022 Booker Shortlist and the winner of the Orwell Prize given for political fiction.

First of all this is a short novel of 110 well-spaced pages with a generously sized font and I must confess I do struggle with the short novel as a form, perhaps even more than I do with short stories.  I approach them with hovering anxiety- that I might not get them, that the short form adopted will require too much reading between the lines extracting the story from what is not there as much as what is there.

I don’t know why I feel like this, if need be, I’m very well versed enough as a reader to extrapolate meaning so I don’t know why this would be a dealbreaker but faced with a couple of tempting novels – one short, one longer I’d generally pick the longer.  I do hope it’s not a latent miserliness in me, subconsciously thinking about value for money as there is certainly much value within this short work.

It is a Christmas story, which makes it both an excellent gift and something to return to each December.  It’s a read in a day title and should be sought out by those who like a festive dose of Ebenezer Scrooge each year (or annually watch “It’s A Wonderful Life”).  With great economy and narrative skills the author weaves a haunting, simple story with much hidden power behind it.  There’s a lot of unsentimental kindness which feels a salve to the soul.

In 1985 in a small Irish town the Furlong family are preparing for Christmas.  Bill, the father, is a coal and timber merchant kept busy by the cold weather.  The true life Magdalen Laundries, a Church-run network of sweatshops for girls fallen on hard times touches Bill’s life but the circumstances will need to be discovered by the reader of these 110 pages as I’m not revealing any more plot.

Claire Keegan certainly leaves the reader wanting more and I will certainly seek out other works by her.

Small Things Like These was published in 2021.  The paperback edition is now available.

My Father’s House – Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker 2023)

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I am shamefacedly admitting I knew nothing about the inspiration for Irish writer Joseph O’Connor’s new novel – Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, a Priest based at the Vatican at the time of Rome’s takeover by the Nazis who was responsible for the saving of some 6,500 lives through the Escape Line, which ran from the neutral Vatican City, housing and hiding soldiers, escaped Prisoners Of War, Jews and others the Nazi regime took against.

This is a fictional account which leads up to a mission, known as a Rendimento, planned for Christmas Eve 1943.  O’Flaherty was supported by a group who met on the pretext of choral singing and some of these are interviewed in the early 1960s and their accounts of what happened runs alongside a third person narrative.  O’Connor writes beautifully with multi-sensory descriptions being layered to build a picture of events and the tale he tells here is involving and often thrilling.  He seems more at pains to ensure we know we are reading fiction than the average historical novelist.  I might be wrong here but from a quick glance at the true events online I think he has changed the identity of the main threat to the mission, a German officer who viewed O’Flaherty as his nemesis.  If this is so, this fictional creation allows the author greater freedom in portraying the evil within this man.

Monsignor O’Flaherty is the lifeblood of this novel but I think I might have appreciated further fleshing out of some of the supporting characters within the choir.  From their interviews I wasn’t always clear who was talking and this narrative structure removed them slightly from the action although I do acknowledge that anonymity at this time was a prerequisite for survival.

I was impressed by this strong novel but I must admit that it didn’t quite get me the way the author’s evocative recreation of a Victorian theatrical world inhabited by Bram Stoker in 2019’s “Shadowplay” did which made it into my Top 5 Books of that year.

My Father’s House will be published on 26th January by Harvill Secker.  Many thanks  to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

All The Broken Places – John Boyne (Doubleday 2022)

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A new John Boyne title is always a reading highlight for me.  I’ve read 7 of his up to now, 4 of which have ended up in my end of year Top 10s. I was both thrilled and made nervous by his decision to write a sequel to his most famous and my 2nd favourite of his, (“The Heart’s Invisible Furies” is probably still my most loved book of the 21st Century so far), “The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas” (2006) which I read in 2018 when it was runner up in my Books Of The Year to “The Count Of Monte Cristo.”

It is such an impressively self-contained piece that it seems an unlikely and perhaps unnecessary book to have a sequel.  In his Author’s Note John Boyne says he’s been mulling the idea over for years and the isolation of lockdown felt like the right time.  The question for me was, did I want to revisit these characters in another setting?

This is the first-person narrative of Gretel, the sister to Bruno, main character in “Striped Pyjamas” and it follows a dual narrative, one which moves through time from the end of World War II and one taking place in modern day London.  Here, Gretel is a sprightly 91 year old living in a smart apartment in Winterville Court, overlooking Hyde Park, the other narrative explores how Gretel has reached this point in her life.

Unsurprisingly, the central theme in the novel is guilt. Gretel has got to 91 living daily with her family’s involvement in the hostilities in the place Bruno thought was called “Out-With”.  The immediate post-war years saw a need for re-invention in different locations until she settles in London. 

My dilemma here, and I think this will be the case for many readers, is Gretel.  She is realistically rather than sympathetically drawn but I couldn’t help rooting for her and I struggled whether this was the right response, and this was likely to be the author’s intention.  Obviously she has got to an old age thousands were deprived of and there are some extraordinary moments in her past which will stop you in your tracks and will fundamentally change the way you feel about this character in “Striped Pyjamas” and Boyne does extremely well to also convey her effectively as an elderly woman still struggling after many decades to come to terms with her past.

Supporting characters do not seem as well drawn as in other of this author’s novels (especially in the contemporary section) but we are seeing them from Gretel’s perspective and words and she is very wrapped up in herself, so perhaps this is appropriate.  As “The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas” builds to a big twist there are a couple of those along the way for those readers looking for a big reveal.

I did enjoy this and wanted to know what was going on but my ongoing niggle as to whether a sequel was necessary was unresolved and so I take that as meaning that this book is not as Essential as “The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas”.  All of the now 8 Boyne works I have read have had something in them to enrich my life but this  for me does not quite make it into my Top 5 of his novels.  It is thought-provoking and at times really gripping but remains slightly in the shadow of his 2006 masterpiece.

All The Broken Places is published by Doubleday on September 15th 2022.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The Queen Of Dirt Island – Donal Ryan (Doubleday 2022)

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Donal Ryan’s last novel “Strange Flowers” (2020) was voted Novel Of The Year at the Irish Book Awards.  Do not be surprised if he does it again with this which I think is even better.

I absolutely loved his debut “The Spinning Heart” (2012) a book voted “Irish Book Of The Decade”.  By the winter 2015 edition of NB magazine I was putting it forward as my choice for “Best Book Of The Twenty-First Century So Far”.

“Strange Flowers” took a while for me to get into.  I felt the narrative style chosen with its very matter of fact fable or fairy story feel initially held me at bay and it wasn’t until about two-thirds of the way through that I realised the extent this canny author had immersed me into the book.  Here, in what is very much a companion piece to “Strange Flowers” (although it works fine as a stand-alone) I was with him right from the start.

It is set in the same location with some of the same characters in a more supporting role this time but moving on a generation as we meet four generations of a family from rural Tipperary.  Main character Saoirse is brought up by her mother with daily visits from her grandmother who supports her daughter-in-law widowed at the very beginnings of motherhood.  Nana and Mother are the lifeblood of this novel, squabbling yet totally supportive, both have been let down by families in their past but they are not going to do that to the current generation.  The last novel was dominated by the superb characterisation of Alexander, who I loved, here it is the relationship between the two strong women who pull the others through the ups and downs of life.

And what I really like about this book is that life just goes on, the community faces some quite shocking events and keeps going.  Towards the end two characters who were central in the last book give their perspective to Saoirse in a way in which she thinks they might break out into the old Doris Day hit “Que Sera Sera” but this viewpoint does permeate the lives here.  So much is subtle and underplayed and you don’t expect that from what is ostensibly a family saga. Nothing is laboured.  Most of the characters would not even understand the relevance of the title, relating to a piece of land held by Mother’s family which has little part to play for most of the novel, other than it informs her personality.  The narrative style gives a lightness of touch I wasn’t as aware of in the previous novel.

Characterisation is so rich, Donal Ryan has created a set of characters who are so well developed within a short space of time.  He brings a whole community to life.  In a way (although the characterisations and location are completely different) it felt to me just a tad reminiscent of what Armistead Maupin was trying to achieve in his “Tales Of The City” series, but I think Donal Ryan’s handling of this is stronger.  He carried this off brilliantly in the talking heads approach of “The Spinning Heart” and has achieved it here within a very different narrative style.  It is totally involving and very impressive writing.

The Queen Of Dirt Island is published by Transworld Digital as an ebook and Doubleday as a hardback on 18th August 2022  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The Echo Chamber – John Boyne (Doubleday 2021)

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Anyone looking for the best, most versatile author of our times?  Here’s a suggestion – John Boyne, and I’m making this claim after only reading 7 of his 21 books.  There’s two timeless classics in his “The Heart’s Invisible Furies” and “The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas” and this novel becomes the 5th of his five star reads, alongside “A Ladder To The Sky” and “The Boy At The Top Of The Mountain”.  When he has missed out on a 5* rating his work is also extraordinary, the tightly structured stylistically so impressive “A Traveller At The Gates Of Wisdom” and his 2019 YA novel “My Brother’s Name Is Jessica”, with its focus on the family of a transgender teen which I found “marvellously empathic” but it missed out on 5* because I didn’t feel totally convinced by the main characters’ family set-up and felt it lacked some of the subtlety of his best work.  My reviews for all of these titles can be found by following the links on this site.

What I did not appreciate was the fuss “My Brother’s Name Is Jessica” caused in the months after I read it.  An interview with Boyne in last week’s Guardian (17/07/21) details this with backlash against it leading to online harassment, misrepresentation, death threats and a period of depression for the author.  It also, far more positively, sowed the seeds for this, his latest novel for adults.

I cannot remember laughing out loud so much at a novel since another Irish author Paul Murray’s “The Mark And The Void” from 2015 and like that novel the humour is rooted very much in the present making it a book for 2021.  Already, I’m acknowledging this may not have the longevity of his greatest work but it warrants five stars for the sheer enjoyment it gave me.

And yes, there is going to be some controversy again over this.  At the centre is social media and the effects this has on one notable family, the Cleverleys.  Father George is a BBC light entertainment staple, a chat-show host famous for many years (I’ve already seen Graham Norton praising this work and jokingly wanting to make clear this character is not based on him), his wife Beverley, a best-selling romantic novelist who now provides the ideas which are written up by a ghost-writer, who is herself celebrated enough to be having an affair with her Ukranian “Strictly Come Dancing” partner, a man who has spread his charms amongst the next generation of the Cleverley family; Nelson, in therapy and only able to cope with social interactions whilst wearing a uniform; Elizabeth, an online troll who gave me a great number of laugh out loud moments and Nelson, a teenage extortionist.  They inhabit a world where the number of likes on your social media is what validates you as a person.  Modern life is a minefield for this family and things soon go wrong with attempts to escape situations only making it worse.  John Boyne is happy to tread on everyone’s toes using real-life celebrities to add to the humour. 

“This is a work of satirical fiction and is not intended to be factual” states the publisher’s note at the beginning but satire is often not funny (as anyone attempting to watch the Britbox “Spitting Image” reboot will testify) but here it is.  Another trap for the comic novel is that the humour often wanes before the mid-way point but Boyne is able to sustain it for the length of his work (only in a couple of places does the pace falter and that is occasionally due to over-reiteration which the author needs to employ to ensure we, as readers, are keeping up) and too often the humour in books becomes predictable whereas here I had no idea where this book was going which was a joy in itself.

Maybe some people will be upset by this and some people deserve to be upset by this but I think John Boyne has written a great comic novel of our time and which should provide a great tonic for these strange times we live in.

The Echo Chamber will be published by Doubleday on August 5th 2021. Many thanks to Lilly and the team at Penguin Random House for the opportunity to read an advance review copy.

A Thousand Moons – Sebastian Barry (Faber 2020)

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barry

Irish author Sebastian Barry’s last novel “Days Without End” (2016) won the Costa Book Of The Year and I read it when it made the 2017 Booker longlist. I enjoyed its unlikely coupling of the two main characters and its “adventure tale of battlegrounds, survival and injustices meted out towards the non-white populations of the developing America” but was a little put off by the present-tense narrative. I was fascinated to hear that Barry was to revisit his characters in what is loosely a sequel to its predecessor. This was one of the titles I focused in on as wanting to read in my start of year Looking Back Looking Forward post.

The main character here is Native American Winona. I had highlighted her and the relationship with Thomas McNulty and John Cole, her adoptive parents, as one of the strengths of “Days Without End” so I was looking forward to her (not present tense) narrative. After the years of wandering and adapting to their environment in the first novel the main characters have settled as farm workers in Tennessee. Their world has very much shrunk and the two men do fade into the background a little here becoming supporting characters and that is disappointing.

Winona’s life consists of risking the antipathy of the local town population because of her heritage in her trips to assist the local lawyer. A young man who works in the dry-goods store, Jas Jonski, takes a shine to Winona and that is where her troubles begin. It’s far less of an adventure tale but the need for survival and the suffering of injustice are once again present and Winona is a positively vibrant and complex character, who like her adoptive parents challenges stereotypes.

As one would expect of an artist of Barry’s calibre it is very well written but for me it just seems to simmer along and never really takes off in the way the last novel did. I missed the epic sweep of that book.

It may be because it is a much quieter novel anyway but given these characters and what we have had from them in the past this quietness was surprising and on this reading just a little disappointing.

threestars

A Thousand Moons was published by Faber and Faber in hardback on 17th March 2020. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the review copy.